


end statement

by softlyblue



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Worms, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, idk what that tag means it made me laugh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23700088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue
Summary: Martin and Jon were stuck in that room an awfully long time.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 11
Kudos: 195





	end statement

**Author's Note:**

> notes: haven’t listened past mid-season 2, don’t know anything about these characters, just lost my mind and needed to create something before i broke and started screaming. set during the finale of season 1, when martin and jon are stuck in the archives.

His hands are shaking. Looking down at them as though he doesn’t own them, as though they aren’t a part of his body but are just things that happen to be in his line of sight, Martin shudders and shoves them into the side pockets of his jacket. His hands are shaking, but now, at least, he can’t see them.

Jon, sitting against the other wall with his knees up against his chest, looks  _ terrible.  _

He’s been looking steadily more terrible over the past few months, but then, they all have. Little sleep and less answers, that’s the thing, and Martin hasn’t exactly been sleeping well on a camping-cot with a few throw blankets he bought from the local vintage-charity shop and had Sasha wash for him. But Jon is looking worse than even that. 

There are bloody wounds on his exposed forearms, from where Sasha and Martin had gone after the worms with the corkscrew. His leg is - damaged, somehow, but Martin doesn’t have the knowledge to know how to fix it. All he knows is that ankles shouldn’t bend like that. But even without the wounds and the leg and the  _ worms,  _ Jon looks worse for the wear, like the last few months have worn on him far more than anyone else. Martin knows it doesn’t make sense. After all, he was the one locked in his room for a fortnight. 

But Jon takes  _ all of this  _ hard. He hasn’t been sleeping. His eyes are almost hollow in his head. 

“You can’t see Sasha, can you,” Jon says, and it isn’t a question. 

Martin stands again, squinting through the blurry glass, but the corridor between them and Jon’s office is just thick with worms - no Prentiss - leading all the way up to the door. All Martin can see from the doorway is Jon’s desk, knocked away from its position, and the tape recorder lying with the little red light blinking, worms wriggling insidiously all over the thing, in and out of speakers and around buttons and through the tape that flickers on the outside of the spinning wheels. “No Sasha,” he says, and his voice comes out wobbly, “And no Tim, either.”

“Great,” Jon says, deadpan as ever. “Excellent.”

He looks, Martin thinks, even worse. 

“Elias was hanging around,” Martin says, although he doesn’t  _ really  _ think Elias will be down any time soon - he prefers to stay on the higher levels, in his nice warm office, so he doesn’t need to come down and confront Jon and his increasing obsession with the  _ worms.  _ Elias doesn’t believe Martin. He knows he doesn’t. 

“Elias may not come down here for hours,” Jon says. He shuts his eyes and rests his head against the wall, hugging his knees tighter. “And if the worms… if Prentiss has any control over her human body, we won’t be safe in here for long.”

“I know,” Martin says. 

He knows. 

Seeing no point in looking out at the worms any longer, he turns and sits down opposite Jon, leaning against the wall himself - he can still feel his hands shaking in his pockets, and the rest of him too, but if he doesn’t acknowledge it then maybe it won’t be happening when next he comes to take stock of his body. Jon’s eyes are closed, so at least he won’t see Martin’s cowardice. Although that shouldn’t really  _ matter,  _ since Jon’s made it very clear over the past few months what he thinks of Martin - useless, slow, dithering, unhelpful, an albatross around the neck of the research department. 

“They’re still in my flat,” he says softly, looking at the hole in his jeans at the knee where he fell a few years ago. He tries never to buy anything new. 

Jon’s tired brown eyes open, and he looks confused for a moment before his face hardens. “The worms?”

“I went back a few weeks ago,” Martin mumbles. In his pocket, he digs his thumb into a scrap of loose skin on the side of his finger, looking to do something with the shaking energy. “Get some clothes, and - well. Living here isn’t ideal for me any more than it is for you. So I want - I’m keen to - I suppose. I went back. During my lunch break. I didn’t want to go in the dark, y’know? And they were scattered all over the floor like someone’d thrown rice after a - like, a wedding. These little curled-up brown things. Hundreds - thousands of them. I couldn’t even get in through the door. I had to give Tim my keys and he collected my stuff for me instead. Isn’t that stupid?”

“I didn’t know that,” Jon says, a lot softer than his usual brick-hard monotone. “You never said.”

“Why would I say?”

There is a long pause. And then: “I suppose I don’t know.” 

“Tim says they’re everywhere,” Martin continues. “He said - when he went into my room, they’d gotten into my sheets. I don’t  _ want  _ to sleep here, Jon, I just - I -”

“Lesser of two evils,” Jon says, as though all the fight has left his body. 

“Right. Exactly.” 

More worm sounds again, but Martin has almost become used to them at this point. They sound like they're being trod on, but it's just thousands of small slick bodies moving over one another, wriggling over surfaces regardless of what they are - the sound used to make him flinch wildly, when he came to the Archives after his stint locked in his room, but now they’re part of the furniture, and he has to really try to notice them at all. 

“I found one in my wardrobe,” Jon says, after another long and heavy silence. His eyes are still closed. “I was going to get a jacket, and there it was on the floor of the wardrobe. Brown. Like - yes, like rice. That’s why I started coming to work so early. If I get dressed in the dark I can’t see how many-” he shudders, and his fingers loop around his thin, fragile wrist- “I can’t see how many worms I’ve brought back with me.”

Martin can’t think of anything to say, so he doesn’t, but he keeps looking at the place Jon’s thumb and forefinger touch, easily around his wrist. It shouldn’t be that thin, but Jon hasn’t been taking his lunch breaks these days, and Martin - if he’s honest, Martin has been too annoyed to be checking, although he  _ knows  _ Jon often forgets to wear his watch, and rather relies on one of his research assistants coming in to remind him to do things like eat and go home. Jon’s hair, too. Usually it’s up in quite a well-kept bun, with little curly lengths falling over his ears towards the end of the day. Martin can count on one hand the amount of times he’s seen it down, and usually it means Jon is tired or rattled, but - 

Well. Today is different in many ways. 

“I’m sorry,” Martin says after a bit. Still no sign of Elias, and no word from Tim or Sasha. “This is my fault.”

_ That  _ makes Jon open his eyes, at least. “No it isn’t.”

Martin scoffs. “Jon, even  _ before  _ we were stuck in here you said it was my fault. That doesn’t change just because I’m the last - the last researcher standing. I went into the fucking spider building, I saw Prentiss, I got chased home and I still came here.”

“I got texts,” Jon says softly. “Our address is hardly secret. You didn’t bring her here any faster than she would have come.”

“Yeah, right.” 

“I’ve been… stressed, recently. Taking it out in places I shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, right.”

But Jon has been. More than any of them he has been, even if Sasha’s taken to making coffee in the building and Tim’s taken to going to the local until it closes and being chased out and Martin’s taken to carrying a corkscrew and a packet of tissues everywhere he goes, for either the worms or the sudden, startling crying fits that even he can’t quite parse the meaning of. But Jon sits in his office, hardly eating, hardly sleeping, recording tapes until he’s hoarse, looking for some sort of answer that these archives will  _ never  _ give him. 

“I’m sorry if I made you think that,” Jon says. Martin thinks it’ll be the closest he’ll get to a real,  _ proper  _ apology. “Now - do you mind - let’s record this. I want to - yes. Record.”

So they do. That's their job, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> pls dont spoil or tell me how ooc i am im only on episode 52 :( i hope you enjoyed!   
> twt sweetlyblue  
> tumblr softlyblue


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